Fibonacci

Italian mathematician (c.1170–c.1240/50)

Fame73.0
Momentum1.5
Italy rank#123

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Fame73.0
Momentum1.5
Italy rank#123
Academics rank#108
Wikipedia50.3K

Lived 1170–1240, aged 70Italy

Italy AcademicsAcademic

Wikipedia
117 languages
Cross-language footprint
Rank in Italy
#123
Academics
Era
1170–1240
Aged 70

Summary

Updated 2026-06-08

He brought the digits 0 through 9 to Europe. Before Fibonacci's 1202 textbook, Western merchants and scholars were still wrestling with Roman numerals — a system that made even basic arithmetic a slog.

Biography

About

Leonardo Bonacci was born around 1170 in the Republic of Pisa, son of a customs official. In 1202 he published Liber Abaci, a book that introduced the Indo-Arabic numeral system to the Western world and demonstrated how merchants could calculate faster than they ever had with Roman numerals. The same text included an example problem about rabbit populations that produced what we now call the Fibonacci sequence, though he didn't name it after himself. The nickname "Fibonacci" — short for filius Bonacci, "son of Bonacci" — didn't appear in print until 1838, though a notary had called him "Lionar…

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